Jesus Has Given You Many Invitations

One cannot overlook the multiple invitations that Jesus offers in the gospels to “come to Him.” Over and over again, Jesus invites people to come to Him for life. He invites the weary and heavy-laden in Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” He invites people to follow him in Matthew 16:24, “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Jesus invites those seeking treasure in Mark 10:21, “And looking at him,

Filed under: Jesus, John Owen, Justification, Missions, Salvation

Justification and Imputed Righteousness: R.C. Sproul

“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.” – Galatians 2:16

Filed under: Doctrine, Justification, R.C. Sproul, Salvation, Sin

Good Friday Meditations

“Let us stand beneath the cross of Calvary, and behold our Lord Jesus hanging there, and remember that His bleeding body was in alliance with the unsuffering Deity. Those wounds of His, that streaming, spear-rent side, was taken into union with the nature of the living and eternal God. The infinite merit of the Godhead was imparted to the sufferings of the manhood. Neither your sins nor mine can ever exceed the merit of the precious blood of Christ. If our sins be high as mountains, the ocean of His atonement, like Noah’s flood, covers the utmost summits of the mountains. It prevails twenty cubits upwards, till all the highest mountains are covered. Though our sins be never so crimson, the blood of Jesus Christ is more crimson, and the one washes out the other. Though our iniquities be never so dark and bitter, His death hath taken away the blackness and bitterness of our sins; and therefore it is that “He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him.”" – Charles H. Spurgeon

“O wondrous, glorious cross! Blessed interpreter of God to us! Scene of the great self-manifestation, the great revelation of the mind and heart of God! O cross of Christ, tell us more and more of this grace of God! Preach reconciliation to the alien, pardon to the guilty, assurance of God’s free yet holy love to the dark and foolish soul! Speak to our hearts; speak to our consciences; pour in light; break our bonds; heal our wounds-all by means of your interpretation of the divine character, your revelation of the righteous love of God!” – Horatius Bonar

“The cross is a center in which many lines of truth meet. The cross is an incomprehensible mystery. That God should be manifest in the flesh, is the great “mystery of godliness.” That the Prince of life should be crucified, was an event which caused the angels to stoop from their celestial thrones, that they might gaze in amazement upon it. The prophets who predicted these events were perplexed at their own prophecies, “They inquired into what time or what circumstances the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating, when He testified in advance to the messianic sufferings and the glories that would follow.”" – Archibald Alexander

“The atonement springs from the fountain of the Father’s love; He commends His own love towards us. We must not think, however, that the action of the Father ended with the appointment and commission of the Son. He was not a mere spectator of Gethsemane and Calvary. The Father laid upon His own Son the iniquities of us all. He spared not His own Son but delivered Him up. He made Him to be sin for us. It was the Father who gave Him the cup of damnation to drink. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Here is love supremely demonstrated.” – John Murray

“The curse which Christ bore upon the cross was not a curse that wrongly rested upon Him; it was not a curse pronounced upon Him by some wicked human law. No, it was the curse of God’s law; it was a curse, therefore, – we tremble as we say it, but the Scripture compels us to say it – it was a curse that rightly rested upon Him. But if that be so, there can be no doubt but that the substitutionary atonement is taught in Scripture. The only way in which a curse could rightly rest upon a sinless One is that He was the substitute, in bearing that curse, for those upon whom it did rightly rest.” – J. Gresham Machen

“Any gospel that talks merely of the Christ-event, meaning the Incarnation without the atonement, is a false gospel. Any gospel that talks about the love of God without pointing out that his love led him to pay the ultimate price for sin in the person of his Son on the cross is a false gospel. The only true gospel is of the ‘one mediator’ (1 Tim. 2:5-6), who gave himself for us. ” – James Montgomery Boice

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For more articles on the Atonement and the Cross of Christ please click here.

Filed under: Charles Spurgeon, Doctrine, God, Jesus, Justification, Salvation, The Glory of God

Augustine and Cassian: God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, pt. 3

Third, Augustine’s view of particular or electing grace stood in opposition to Cassian’s theology of the universal availability of salvation. Augustine said, talking about Romans 9, “Here is mercy and judgment, mercy towards the election which has obtained the righteousness of God, but judgment to the rest which have been blinded.” Augustine believed that everyone who comes to the Father for salvation has first heard from the Father and everyone who does not come has not heard from the Father. Leaning on passages like John 6:37 he says, “For if everyone who has heard from the Father, and has learned, comes, certainly everyone who does not come has not heard from the Father; for if he had heard and learned, he would come.” In other words, if one is to come to the Father they must come by the drawing power of the Spirit, which proceeds from the Father. We are commanded on one hand to come to the Father for salvation while on the other we are told that unless there is a change of nature we will not come on our own accord. This is why there is a clear juxtaposition in Augustine of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Because we are commanded to come and yet we will never do so apart from a divine sovereign act of God.

Cassian saw God’s love being extended to all in the universal offering of salvation, and could not stand the idea that God’s love could be at all selective. Cassian says, “for if He willeth not that one of His little ones should perish, how can we imagine without grievous blasphemy that He does not generally will all men, but only some instead of all to be saved?” According to Cassian’s theology of God’s love, there was required in it a fair chance for all people. In other words, Cassian thought if God really loved people, He would not give the command of moral perfection and then disable the will, this would be completely unfair and would destroy a true responsibility on man’s part to come to Christ for salvation. If people could turn themselves to God by their own will, then God would only have to see, or forsee, who would create in themselves the spark of faith, and predestine them to eternal life on that basis. Cassian seems to muddle the functions of the faculties of the soul and not demonstrating a clear understanding of the will as a function of the heart within the perimeters of a sovereign God.

The more biblical understanding of the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human responsibility is better framed by Augustine in his work, On the Predestination of the Saints than by John Cassian in his work, On the Protection of God. Augustine presents a more biblical understanding of the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human responsibility than does John Cassian in several ways. First, Augustine says that even the beginning of faith is of God’s gift while Cassian believes man is capable, in himself, to choose good. Second, Augustine taught that original sin had left humanity in a state of death and there is a total inability to do anything apart from divine intervention. Cassian held that man must be capable of some motion toward God and he proposes that the will of man was not completely dead to sin. Third, Augustine’s view of particular or electing grace stood in opposition to Cassian’s theology of the universal availability of salvation. Augustine did not deny that fallen man still has a will and that the will is capable of making choices. He argued that fallen man still has a free will but has lost his moral liberty and is in bondage to sin, which is no freedom at all. It is only a work of divine grace that frees the will that is under bondage and makes man able, only, to choose that which is most lovely to him, which at that point, is God and God alone.

Filed under: Augustine, Books, Church History, Doctrine, Heresy, Justification, Man, Salvation, Sovereignty

Augustine and Cassian: God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, pt. 2

Second, Augustine taught that original sin had left humanity in a state of death, not just weakness, but total inability to do anything apart from divine intervention and the giving of life in salvation by God. The will is alive and free, but its only function is to manifest the desire of a corrupt heart in a choice. In other words, the will can not choose that which is outside of its nature to choose. The will is completely and utterly bound to sin, since men always and without exception love the darkness rather than the light. In salvation God, not motivated by anything He saw in sinners – regenerates the hearts of sinners, causing them to love God more than sin, by His Spirit. Augustine says, “This grace, therefore, which is hiddenly bestowed in human hearts by the Divine gift, is rejected by no hard heart, because it is given for the sake of first taking away the hardness of the heart.” Augustine explained that God did this for some and not for others by referring to Romans 9 and saying, “God teaches all men to come to Christ, not because all come, but because none comes in any other way.” These are the doctrines of predestination, divine sovereignty, grace and human responsibility that Cassian felt dismissed an important truth about God and humanity.

For Cassian to hold his theology that man must be capable of some motion toward God, he proposes that the will of man was not completely dead to sin. Instead, the will was only severely weakened as a result of the fall. Aided by God man was capable of generating a small spark of initiative toward the good by the power of his own will, which in turn would produce actual good. Cassian says, “for when God sees in us inclined to will what is good, he meets, guides, and strengthens us.” He goes on to say, “when He sees in us some beginnings of a good will, He at once enlightens it and strengthens it and urges it on towards salvation, increasing that which he Himself implanted or which He sees to have arisen from our own efforts.” For Cassian the grace of God always cooperates with our will for the result of salvation, while Augustine maintains a more biblical view of God’s grace alone for our totally dead and sinful hearts apart from our enslaved will. According to Cassian original sin could not have had the effect that Augustine claimed. Looking to passages in Matthew 13:13, Luke 12:57, 1 Corinthians 3:7 and others, He says, “For we should not hold that God made man such that he can never will or be capable of what is good: or else He has not granted him a free will, if he has suffered him only to will or be capable of evil, but neither to will or be capable of what is good of himself.”

Filed under: Augustine, Books, Church History, Doctrine, Heresy, Justification, Man, Salvation, Sovereignty